Runways are commonly used for an aircraft to travel during takeoff and during landing. During landing runway conditions/braking assessment may be received from air traffic controllers for aircraft braking. Conditions that develop on runways ma vary with weather and other phenomenon. For example, conditions that develop on the runways may include, without limitation, snow, standing water, slush, ice, debris, indentations, and plant growth that extend onto the runway.
Conditions for a runway may be noted by pilots of aircraft that are using the runway or by equipment at airport/air traffic controllers or braking performance may be reported by the landing aircraft to an airport. The pilots or equipment operators may communicate the conditions for the runway to the air traffic controllers. Further, the air traffic controllers may inform other aircrafts of the conditions. In some cases, the runway conditions available with the air traffic controllers may be out-dated or irrelevant to the aircraft weight category (e.g., wheel tyre loading). For example, the braking assessment/runway condition data from the air traffic controllers to an aircraft may not be possible or accurate when the aircraft is the first flight of the day, when runway surface conditions have changed since last landing and/or when there is no air traffic controller process to check/relay this information to the aircraft. Also in some cases, there may be limited levels of braking which the pilot may have to manually input into the braking system via selector switch based on air traffic controller's estimate of the runway conditions. This may lead to a safe/conservative usage of braking which may be significantly below the optimum achievable braking and extend the braking distance. Hence time to exit the runway increases, constraining airport runway capacity.